I just got a new 40 gb HD 7200 rpm, my idea is move my OS from partition 1 on 20GB HD into the new faster drive, after this reformat that partition and use it for storage. How can I do this ?, I'm thinking getting rid of the 3 GB HD and use this conection for the new one, after having these two drive connected How do I move the files?? do I need any aditional app for this task? and wich one?.

When this is completed and i have a copy of my OS into the new drive, I'll change positions of master/slave on the drives and reboot, but how do I know where I'm booting from? If a made a copy of C:/ into de new hard drive now I have 2 drives with the same name partitons .... How will XP behave when the new drive is plugged in, and, to finish how do I reformat the old C:/ partition?

In my opinion, disconnect the 3gb hd, and conect the new one.
run fidsk ( or partition magic ) make the partitions you want, i recommend to make 3. Then format the partitions and make a self clean installation into the new partiton.
I don't know if it is posibble to copy your OS into a new drive. So as i said i think we will have to install it again.

thank you for those quick replies, nut i'm still puzzled, whe I connect the 20 gb hd as slave this one still has a partition C:/ on it and after clean install XP on the new one that also will have another partition C:/ will XP hang? or will it rename the drives with a new drive letter.

the same apply for the secon partition on 20 gb (D) if I partition the 40 gb as luish suggested C,D & E will be taken.

Bob, thanks for your idea, I have Ghost 2002 installed but if I make a image of the old drive to put into the new one, how can I expand the image to get the OS to reboot from?
the size of that image will be no less than 6 gigs compressed, like a said before I'm just a regular user please a little more detail on this procedure, and, you assumption is correct the old drive is fine just wanna use the new one, for what I read 7200 will make a big difference over the 5200 that I'm using now, is this true? Will I see a significant increase on performance speed on the computer??

with Ghost or Drive Image you need to backup the desired partition somewhere other than the partition being backed up.. then you need to 'restore' it.. so, you could backup your current C: to your 8GB D: then connect the new drive and create your new partitions (ie. C: 12GB, D: 8GB, E: 20GB).. now connect the new drive as master and teh 20GB as slave.. boot up with the Ghost or Drive Image boot disk and restore the image to the new C:.. when you copied all the data off teh 20GB to the 40GB you can compeltely remove all partitions on the 20GB drive and create new ones and use it to backup data.. it's a bit of a process if you're new at it..

one thing to note about teh 7200RPM drive is that if your motherboard does not support ATA100 or 133 the drive will default to the motherboard's speed.. if it's currently a ATA66 the drive will run at that speed.. if that's the case get a Promise ATA100 (or equiv) controller and connect the new drive to it and the old drive to the secondary channel on the motherboard or Promise controller..

Robbie, thanks for the info like u said, sounds like a process, but I dont think I'll have a problem doing that, how can i check the speed on my motherboard (ATA 66 or 100)?? I don't have the motherboard manual to get that info, if I open the case can i Get that info from the motherboard itself ?